Eric Watson, who has died of a heart attack aged 56, was an important shaper of 1980s pop photography. His work for Smash Hits during a key era in British pop helped create the glossy image of the age. In particular, Watson's collaboration with Pet Shop Boys – Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe – defined the notion of image-making as a vital part of the way the post-punk generation took control of its own marketing.

Writing in the Guardian in 1993, Dave Rimmer noted: "Everything one now thinks of as the Pet Shop Boys – silent Chris walking two steps behind singing Neil, and so on – stems from discussions the group had with photographer/videomaker Eric Watson at the very beginning of their career."

"His aesthetic and our aesthetic pretty much coincided," Tennant says now. "We had endless discussions about the way we wanted to look. We didn't want to be smiley pop stars. We spent lots of EMI's money on endless photo sessions."

A self-portrait taken by Eric Watson in 1980, the year he left Hornsey College of Art. Photograph: Eric Watson

Watson's cover for the group's 1987 No 1 single It's a Sin was a case in point. It was shot inside the Nicholas Hawksmoor-designed Christ Church in Spitalfields, east London. Rather than use the soaring ecclesiastical architecture, Watson posed Tennant and Lowe in the decaying anteroom of the then semi-derelict building. After seeing the image projected large during an event at the National Portrait Gallery in 1999, Watson told me that he found it an "almost surreal experience. It only occurred to me after looking at it for a while that I was its originator. There is something of a memento mori there."

Watson's influences ranged from Walter Sickert to Harold Pinter and John Berger. His work with Pet Shop Boys, more culturally aware than most of their pop peers, allowed him the kind of artistic latitude he would not have experienced with other groups. "Most of my work with PSBs was about the juxtaposition of shiny pop things and decay," he said. "The implied entropy."

Born in Newcastle, Watson moved to London in 1974 and studied fine art at Hornsey College of Art from 1977 to 1980. His fellow students included Stuart Goddard (who became Adam Ant) and Mike Barson from Madness. Unusually for the time, Watson was encouraged to use photography, despite being on a painting course. On leaving college, he worked as an assistant to the photographers Red Saunders and Gered Mankowitz (known collectively as the Rembrandt Brothers), then photographing covers for Madness and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.

In 1981 he was invited to work for Smash Hits, after the editor, David Hepworth, saw photographs Watson had shot for Madness. He became the magazine's main photographer and at around the same time Tennant, whom he knew through a mutual friend from Newcastle, was made assistant editor.

During the magazine's heyday, Tennant says, "Eric was very brilliant at lighting – he had this very fresh, beautiful, deep-colour look he'd learned from Red Saunders." Tennant recalls the work Watson did with Orange Juice: "He made Edwyn Collins look so beautiful – actually, it intimidated me when he came to photograph us." Watson created a "heroic" style, which he applied to Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Spandau Ballet. He was one of the first British photographers to work with Madonna.

After leaving Smash Hits in 1986, Watson concentrated on videos for Rod Stewart, Chris Rea, Holly Johnson, Dusty Springfield and Pet Shop Boys. Together with Andy Morahan, he made the video for Pet Shop Boys' first single, West End Girls, which involved Tennant and Lowe strolling through the streets of east London at 6am. During filming, a tramp appeared and started walking in sync with the pair. Tennant credits Watson with having got the group their first deal with a major label, when the photographer played West End Girls to Gordon Charlton of Epic Records. Watson went on to make videos for hits such as Opportunities, with its gothic overtones drawing on John Huston's film Wise Blood; Domino Dancing ("the homoeroticism was all Eric's idea," quips Tennant); and It's Alright, a homage to Robert Mapplethorpe involving a roomful of babies.

Watson's work is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, and was represented in the latter's Icons of Pop exhibition (1999-2000, and touring), to that date the most successful photographic show mounted by the gallery. In 2006, to coincide with the publication of Pet Shop Boys: Catalogue, a 20th-anniversary retrospective, a selection of Watson's photographs was shown at the National Portrait Gallery. The gallery's curator of photographs, Terence Pepper, says that Watson's photographs "remain lasting examples of the best of pop and thoughtfully produced studio photography. No serious history of British pop portraiture could possibly be undertaken without the inclusion of his work."

Watson lived in Rye, East Sussex, and latterly taught at Rye college. He is survived by his partner, Krysia, and their son, Eugene, and daughter, Willa.